By : Ashley Mowreader

The topline:

Trellis Strategies is a non-profit research and technical assistance organization that focuses on issues related to postsecondary education.

Trellis conducts student surveys to gain data and identify trends in the college experience with a focus on challenges or obstacles students experience to reduce the number of students who don’t graduate.

By completing a survey for Trellis, you help people in your community and beyond learn about why it’s hard to be a college student today and things that could help people like you graduate.

Hi, we’re Trellis Strategies! You may have gotten an email from us recently asking you to complete a survey; thanks for checking your email. 

We are a non-profit organization based in Texas that partners with colleges and universities across the country with the goal of learning more about students’ stories to help them graduate and achieve their dreams after finishing their education. We are one of many organizations that conduct student surveys with colleges and universities, but we’re best known for the Student Financial Wellness Survey: an annual survey that collects data on basic needs insecurity for students on a national level. 

With our survey, we hope to learn more about students’ experiences in college, whether that’s at a community college in a rural area or a selective private college on the coast. We’re interested in knowing more about the reasons students don’t finish college—whether that’s due to high tuition costs, a lack of resources to pay for food or housing, childcare needs, personal stress or something entirely different—to figure out what could help keep students in school. 

Our data helps people in power—including college administrators, policymakers and researchers—point out obstacles that are common in the college experience and find ways to remove those obstacles, so that more students graduate and have successful careers and ambitions after their education is complete.

When you take the survey, you can answer authentically and rest assured that your responses are private. Your data is anonymized, which means it’s detached from any identifying information such as your name, student ID or email, before it’s shared with your university or other participating survey partners.

Once the survey is complete, we provide a national-level overview of our results on our Research Hub, which is free and available to the public to read. To learn more about the Student Financial Wellness survey and how we report out the data, you can see the latest results here. 

As a thank you for participating in our survey, we may enter you into a raffle for a prize or give you an incentive directly. We provide more details about the incentive in the survey link sent to your email, and if you win, we’ll send another email with instructions on how to redeem it.

If you want to learn more about surveys at Trellis Strategies, we invite you to contact us with your questions or to check out the frequently asked questions below. 

FAQs: 

Trellis Strategies is a research and technical assistance organization that focuses on issues related to postsecondary education. Trellis works with colleges, universities, nonprofits and others to create student-focused programs and initiatives, with the goal of helping students graduate and be successful in their lives after college.

Trellis Strategies is based in Texas but has staff across the U.S. in research, data, consulting and project management roles. 

Each of Trellis’ surveys have unique purposes and partners, but most are conducted for colleges and universities. The Student Financial Wellness Survey has been sent to students at over 340 colleges and universities in 37 states. 

Trellis Strategy believes each student’s college journey is unique and survey data helps create a more detailed picture of what students across the country need to succeed. By completing a survey, you help your school, state and the country understand college students better and maybe even create change to help future students. 

Survey data has been used to identify spaces to invest financial support and make decisions that guide future events, including writing of college and government policy, creating administrative changes or connecting students with the resources they need to stay enrolled.

Colleges and university leaders are the people who use this data the most, and they use it for planning, identifying current challenges and learning more about financial challenges that students face. 

In the past, colleges have used Trellis survey data to build financial education curriculum, create food pantries or emergency aid programs, and identify which students might need more help. Sometimes administrators will use survey findings to request funding from grants or community partners, all with the goal of helping students. 

After the survey is completed, partner colleges and universities receive a summary report of their students’ responses and a data file. Trellis Strategies creates a national dataset, using responses from all students, to create bigger picture findings and to advocate for nationwide change. 

Yes! Trellis Strategies values your privacy and will never share your survey responses in a way that it’s connected to you, including your name, student ID or contact information. Your school can’t see your individual responses, nor can anyone else. We use your student contact information only to send you to surveys and we never share that data elsewhere.  

Data security, like privacy, is super important to Trellis Strategies. All of the data we collect and store is only accessible to the research team. You can learn more about our data security and deletion policies here. 

After data is cleaned and analyzed, results are often shared on the Trellis Strategies Data Hub in the form of free reports. Trellis publishes a bigger analysis of the aggregate data and will do smaller reports on certain trends or student populations. Learn more and access past survey reports here. 

Eligibility for Trellis surveys varies depending on the project, but most surveys invite all enrolled undergraduate students ages 18 and up to participate. Additional parameters may be required for certain projects, such as those for student parents or who have left college for a period of time, or may be set by individual colleges or universities.

At the end of your survey invitation, we will ask if you’d like to opt in to receive future surveys. Depending on your eligibility, we may send you more surveys to fill out, so be sure to check your inbox. 

We would love for your friends to participate! However, your survey link is unique to you,
so please don’t share it. Have your friends check their email for the survey invitation.

Students who take a Trellis survey will either be entered into a raffle to win an incentive or will receive a guaranteed incentive, depending on the survey. You will find information on the incentive in the invitation email where you receive your survey link, and on the first page you see when you click on the survey link. If you receive an incentive for your participation, you will get an email with instructions on how to retrieve it.

For additional questions you can contact surveys@trellistrategies.org 

Ashley Mowreader is a freelance data journalist. Previously, Ashley worked for Inside Higher Ed, covering barriers to student success nationally, with a focus on evidence-based solutions. She holds a bachelor’s in journalism from Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing her master’s in journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. 